The 2020 national and state election campaigns are entering the post-Labor Day stretch and are not pretty. Our Colorado U.S. Senate race, between Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat John Hickenlooper, seems to be guided by the old adage: “If you can’t say something nice about your opponent, then by God let’s hear it.”

And the presidential election has become ugly and, in places, deadly.

Most Americans dislike, if not hate, politics. Yet giving up on politics is not an option.

We don’t like conflict, either. Yet every community and the world are full of people with differences, often sharp differences. If you prize liberty, you will have differences.

There is no escaping politics and political life if we are humans. People enter compacts and join communities in order to survive and flourish. Once that happens, politics is inevitable.

Politics, when properly conducted, is how we work through our differences and identify and promote commonly shared goals. Politics, in its most positive version, is when people listen civilly to one another and negotiate pragmatic accommodations that allow us to resolve conflicts and live peacefully.

Politicians need, by definition, to be ambitious and get up on the public stage. Part of what politicians have to do is posturing, acting and showmanship. They are forced by the election system to be self-promoters and boast that they, more than their opponents, will make a significant difference when elected.

Politics is always an admixture of personal striving and personal competitiveness, pitting rivals against one another who are simultaneously advocating for both their public policy choices and the claim that they would make the best leader.

Politics is hard, messy and full of temptations. Biting the apple of power, with the accompanying adrenaline rush of personal importance, changes those who succeed in getting into the “political room.” Those changes can sometimes be ravenous in terms of swollen egos. Yet the best of politicians effectively help the republic navigate competing interests in order to arrive at something approximating the public interest. The best of politicians help us define and make progress.

We are all turned off by negative campaigning. Most of this year’s campaigns involve too many smearing ads aimed at diminishing the credibility of the opponent.

Campaign strategists pounce on any weakness or character flaws, perceived or real, of their opponent. Why? Because it so often works. But, in tearing down opponents, these tactics tend to discredit everyone in public life and leave the voters with little trust in the our political system.

The late conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer had it right when he wrote: “Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every practitioner in the country — and then it declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in politics and politicians.”

Here is the challenge. More than any other form of government, the kind of representative democracy that has emerged under the American Constitution requires a politics of faith combined with a politics of skepticism.

It requires faith concerning the common human enterprise. It requires a belief that if most people are informed and caring they can be trusted with their own self-government. It also necessitates an optimism that when things begin to go wrong, the people can be relied on to reset politics and government in a more desirable direction.

Yet a healthy skepticism is needed as well. Constitutional democracy requires us to be questioning of leaders. We must never entrust any group with too much power. And we should always doubt those who profess to have all the answers.

We know there are few issues where truth, right and the angels are all on one side.

Although we prize majority rule, we also know to be skeptical enough to ask whether the majority is always right. Democracy requires us to be vigilant about whether we ae tolerating and protecting the rights and opinions of others. We must always question whether our policy processes are advancing the goals of liberty, equality, and justice.

In short, the democratic ideal rests upon a complicated blend of faith in the people and skepticism of them — as well as faith in leaders and skepticism of them.

Because of the negative bias that incentivizes the media, we regularly read about Governor Shakedown, Mayor Kickback, Senator Flip-Flop, or Representative Pay-to-Play. No wonder the popular view that “All politicians are guilty — until proven innocent.”

Politics is like fir — it can be invaluable yet it can cause enormous damage. Hitler, Stalin, Franco, and Castro were politicians and political operatives. Fidel Castro self-servingly once boasted: “We made a revolution to get rid of the politicians.” He was wrong.

Blessed are the politicians who admit to being politicians and respect politics as a means for obtaining group collaboration for the common good. Politics is inevitable, necessary, and desirable if we can keep it honorable and fair.

Beware people saying: “This isn’t a time for politics,” or “We need to put politics aside.” Beware those who say what we need is “leaders, not politicians.” The need is for politically gifted leaders and leaders with savvy political talent. Remember that Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Truman, Reagan and Obama were politicians well before they became respected presidential leaders.

Truman rightly joked that a “statesman” was a politician who died several years ago.

Three cheers for those who have the guts and stamina to run for political office and thereby offer ideas, choices, and plausible paths forward. They work to provide the glue that holds together a nation of feisty individualists.

Politics can be more than a necessary evil. It can be a liberating and freeing activity. Politics is at the crucial heart of a representative republic. It is to democracy what the experimental method is to science, what melody is to music, what imagination is to poetry, and what powdery snow is to Colorado skiers.